


Samhain Stories

by Aegir



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Ghosts, Samhain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27306916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: Hilarion tries to unsettle the new commander on his first Samhain at Castellum.  Alexios has a better story to tell. Neither of them really believe in the ghosts of the Ninth Legion though....
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Samhain Stories

It was the Feast of Samhain, the new Commander’s first year at Castellum, and Hilarion was in one of what Lucius called his moon moods. 

He knew, as they all knew, the Commander most likely included since he knew a surprising amount about the ways of the tribes, that though the Samhain fires had not been lit within the fort’s walls there would be food out tonight for returning spirits. Samhain made Hilarion a little uneasy, the tribesman of the Parisii that would have liked to set a plate at odds with the sophisticated Roman cynicism he had acquired, and when Hilarion was uneasy he liked to unsettle someone else. The method he chose that night was not particularly original, but the new Commander was just young enough and green enough he might fall for it.

“I’ll tell you a tale I heard in Eburacum,” he said across the dice table. “You know there are still the marks of the Ninth Hispana on the stones there?”

There was a slight pause before the Commander said, “The legions in those days carved their inscriptions to last.”

“Aye, well, stones aren’t all they left behind, so it’s said.” He had the Commander’s full attention anyway.

“There’s a story told on the Via Decumana in Eburacum. They say there are times you can hear a military trumpet call, when no trumpet should be sounding. When a trumpet’s heard in that street, then it’s time to leave it. It’s usually dusk, they say, on a night there’s not many in the streets, a cold one perhaps or rain falling. Never a bright summer’s day. It’s when a harsh night is drawing in, the Lost Legion comes marching home.”

It was barely a story, really, but it had spooked a very young Hilarion, hearing it on an Eburacum back street late on a misty afternoon, and he did all the justice he could to it now.

“It’s not the whole Legion, not even a cohort. They are filthy, mud-splashed, exhausted. They stumble as they walk, their formation is lost, their spears drag on the ground. They can be heard speaking to each other, but no-one has ever admitted to making out the words. Are they glad to have reached their base? Are they mourning the lost? Or do they know that they are dead?”

The Commander had listened impassively, although his expression was intent. 

“I can beat that,” he said, after a pause.

“Go on then, sir,” Hilarion challenged.

“I grew up in the south of Britain, near Calleva,” the Commander began. “There’s a family farming in the Down Country trace their line back to the last Primus Pilus of the Ninth, who disappeared with the Legion. They used to have a town house in Calleva, it’s gone now, but in the days when Allectus the usurper held Britain there were some of the family living there.

“This story is about what followed when Allectus was defeated and his mercenaries fled from the field to Calleva, and the town gates were not closed in time.”

They were all listening now, Lucius and Anthonius and even Kaeso. Druim was absent, and the others had been paying little heed to Hilarion’s story, the trouble with a small mess that seldom changed was that after a while you had heard all each others’ stories. This story, though was new, and so they all listened. 

“Some of the townsmen made a stand in the streets, while the rest of the folk fled to barricade the forum basilica. It was a brave fight, but it would not have lasted long, if strange soldiers had not come to their aid.

“Their clothing was not like any the Legions use now, but their weapons were from a Roman armoury, there were old soldiers at Calleva who could see that. They had a war cry, and they had a standard, an Eagle. It was battered and green as though not cleaned these many years, and there were no honours on its spear shaft, but it was the Eagle of a Legion all the same. And these men, not a Legion, less than two centuries, they turned the tide, so that the citizens gained the basilica, and barred the gates.

“The strange soldiers stayed with the citizens and fought with them even as their foes fired the Forum, to drive them out. It was a near thing, they say, but the cavalry of Asklepiodotus arrived just in time to drive out the mercenaries of Allectus, and save the townsfolk, although not most of the town buildings. Afterwards, when men looked for the Eagle standard it was nowhere to be seen. The only Eagle with Asklepiodotus’ forces was that of the Thirtieth, and that was bright polished and laden with honours, nothing like the Eagle in the fighting at Calleva.

“Small wonder then, that some say it was the Eagle of the Ninth. They say it was a Lost Legion saved the folk of Calleva.”

“A Lost Legion rallying to the kin of its Primus Pilus,” Kaeso remarked. “I’ve heard stranger stories.” The words were serious, but followed with a grin. “A good tale anyway.”

Yes, a good tale. Hilarion did not really believe it, but it seemed the new Commander did have some hidden depths, if he could pay his Senior Centenarius back so neatly. 

It was very late in the year that Hilarion found the Ducenarius of the Third Ordo , balanced on a bit of fallen masonry trying to reach one arm into a hole in the wall of an old disused store shed, while the junior trumpeter looked on anxiously. 

“Plague take the creature,” the Commander was muttering irritably, “How did it even get in here?” Apparently finding it hard to get his hand down the hole he pulled his signet ring off and balanced it on a piece of projecting stone. Hilarion was in the act of reflecting that the Commander, although not a tall man, was taller than young Rufus, and the angle of the fortress wall that the old store shed had been built against would make it hard for him to get his right arm into the hole, when the Commander gave a relieved exclamation and withdrew his hand with a small striped bundle of fur clasped in it. The action somehow dislodged one of the loose stones round the hole, which fell, knocking the Commander’s ring from the projection where he had placed it. Hilarion shot out a hand and caught the ring as it spun through the air.

“Rufus, next time that object gets stuck in a hole, you can extract him yourself,” the Commander said, returning the kitten to Rufus. The little creature promptly burrowed into the young man’s cloak, letting out a faint distressed mew. Hilarion grinned with amusement and held out a hand.

“Your ring, sir,”

“Ah, thank you, Centenarius.” Hilarion moved to hand the ring back, but then found himself taking a moment to examine it. His first reaction to the ring on meeting the new Commander had been to think it flashy, too grand. Then he had ceased to think about it at all. Now he saw it closely he realised it was not, as he had assumed, a new ring, in fact it was decidedly battered.

“This looks very old.”

“It is,” the Commander said. “It’s been passed down through a long line of soldiers, since my family first came to Britain. I’d hate to be the one who lost it.” 

“Kill! Kill! Kill!” The high hate-filled voice of the Oak-priest, crying the death sentence of the Third Ordo. They could not live through this, and Hilarion knew it, but discipline had him shouting the needed orders all the same. It fell to him, because although Alexios had been alive when they dragged him back through the ramparts he was too hurt and dazed to lead a last stand. 

Wolf howls rose behind him, Morvidd fell, an arrow in his throat. A good shot in the dark, but it would not save them. Then, unbelievably, clear and high, the call of a Roman trumpet from behind the tribes, the sound of new voices raised in war-cries. The tribesmen wavered, Hilarion seized the chance and yelled the command to charge, hearing the call taken up by Conan’s trumpet behind him. The tribesmen were breaking, running for their horses with the wolves behind them. Hilarion struck and struck again, until there were no enemies before him, only the dim shapes on horseback with the wolf-ears that marked them as brothers-in-arms, and behind that…

He never forgot it. It should have been too dark to see the men clearly, but he did see them. They were as ragged and filthy and gaunt as the men around him. Their gear was like nothing used today, but it was Roman. Their swords were out, and their heads were high, and behind them, raised proudly, there was the shadow of an Eagle. 

There was a man in the forefront, a slight narrow-faced man, with a high-crested helmet. As Hilarion stared the man raised his arm in the legionary salute, and the fire of torch-light behind Hilarion sparked back green from the stone of a ring on his hand.

They did not vanish, not quite. They dissolved into the dark, or the dark embraced them, and then there were only a score or so of Frontier Wolves before him. Hilarion shook his head and looked around. A few of the men were staring before them, their expressions much what he felt his own to be. But only a few, most were showing varying mixtures of triumph, relief, ebbing blood-lust and greeting. 

He would wonder, afterwards. The Ninth would, like all Legions, have left more than stones behind them. Not hard to think the blood of soldiers of the lost Hispana still ran in the Parisii. Perhaps in some of the tribes north of the wall as well. Perhaps there was a reason only a few had seen them.

Alexios, he soon realised, had seen nothing, he had been only half-conscious and in no state to join the charge. Hilarion did overhear him say, after they had learned their relief was a surviving double patrol from the First Ordo, “It sounded like many more than two dozen men,” but it did not seem he thought very much of it. Hilarion looked at the ring on the finger of a freshly bandaged arm, and remembered the tale on Samhain night, and wondered. It did not altogether make sense, if the last Primus Pilus of the Ninth had worn the ring when he marched north, how could it be worn by Alexios now? 

For a long time afterwards he could still hear the fading trumpet call. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hilarion’s account of the ghosts of Eburacum is taken from accounts of ghosts said to have been seen by more than one witness in the basement of the Treasurer’s House in York. The descriptions of the soldiers’ equipment are thought by historians to fit the fourth century, which would mean the ghosts can’t be the Ninth Legion, but never mind! 
> 
> I’m sure Alexios does know it wasn’t ghosts that saved Calleva, but he thinks Hilarion is making ghost stories up, and is paying him back in kind.


End file.
